As the Daily Hurl gets behind the British government’s campaign to halt winter heating allowance to pensioners living in the sunny Mediterranean, our friends Harald and Martina Dempf send us these lovely reminders of what winter can be like on their hillside at Vouno, outside Glossa. We hope that they and our neighbours stay warm on these freezing nights.

We have not seen anybody around with snowboards or skis but if we have this every year we might be able to expand the tourist season.
*Land owners can rent out their land for ski slopes.
*Kalivia with central heating can become luxury chalets.
*New businesses can be opened with snow mobiles for rent, snow chains, ski clothes, skis.
*Tavernas serving soups etc.
Ohhhhh there are so many possibilities as long as this damn snow stays for a while.
The municipality have asked everybody not to drive if necessary. If you need help please call for Skopelos 24243-50101; Glossa 24240-33502/34183/34480; and Elios 24240-33689.

The news that Greece will be holding a general election on January 25, following the failure of centre-right one-man candidate Stavros Dimas to win the required 180 parliamentary votes that would have made him President, has triggered a spree of speculation, although none of it as much fun as the Are You Syriza Enough? quiz, which we found at the Guardian. As anyone who takes the quiz quickly finds out, it is very much tongue in cheek, although we are reluctant to reveal who of the Skopelosnews troika gave the answers that resulted in the score in our screengrab.

We’re not sure what is most shocking, the news that the abandoned SCAN animal charity kiosk on the paralia was vandalised over the Christmas holidays, or what the burglary revealed afterwards. It seems likely that the vandalism was committed by someone hoping there might be money inside the kiosk, but when we passed again the upper farmhouse door on the kiosk, which has shelving for books inside, revealed no less than three copies of the S&M bonkbuster Fifty Shades of Grey, looking suspiciously unread. We’re still trying to fathom why at least three visitors would bring such a book on holiday – and then appear reluctant to take it home with them. More shocking still, a later pass uncovered a copy of Jilly Cooper’s How To [sic] Survive Christmas. Perhaps most shocking of all, however, is that all four volumes were still there when we passed again a few days later.

Better news, however, is that we then encountered veterinarian Nina Kathinioti and her husband Antonis repairing the kiosk and preparing to remove it somewhere safe. Nina said that she and others are hoping to try to revive SCAN in 2015, so we will be reporting on their efforts in the new year.

From Tom:
Reporting from New England, about 7570 Kilometers or 4705 Miles or 4,448,881 Smoots from Skopelos. As a responsible 1/3 of the SkopelosNews troika, I have been wracking my brain to come up with a story which may be vaguely connected to Skopelos.

The best that I could do was to copy a Googlemaps feature that tells you how far physically from one point to another on earth.

In the town of Andover, Massachusetts there is a road called “Skopelos Circle”, which I’m not going to bother to visit as one can see from the air that there are 7 or 8 MacMansions on Skopelos Circle. (Bing Maps).

As many of our readers are located in the UK it might be interesting to learn how many place names were borrowed from towns and cities in Wales, England, Scotland. Of course there are Boston and Plymouth, Cambridge and Hull, Ipswich and Springfield. I am currently in the town of Wayland which might have some connection with the area around Thetford, Norfolk famous for the Wayland Jail. Nearby in Norfolk are Attleborough and Hingham located in Massachusetts in Bristol and Norfolk counties respectively.

We have an Ayr(e) here which is a nod to our pals in Scotland, but neither England’s Ramsbottom nor Prickwillow grace our map of Massachusetts.

The list of the 14 counties of Massachusetts reads like a who’s who of English place names except Nantucket (Wampanoag), Dukes (a possession of the Duke of York), Hampton (Earl of) and Franklin (Ben) though there are Franklin Streets in Belfast, Glasgow, Northampton, Brighton and Reading.

The focus of my juvenile delinquent days was the Town of Lexington where the first battle of the American Revolution took place in April 1775. Lexington was named after Robert Sutton, 2nd Baron Lexinton, which might be a derivative of Laxton in Nottinghamshire. Before being baptised Lexington the settlement was known as Cambridge Farms.

Alas there is no Glossa nor Staphylos here but the name Athens graces at least 20 locales in the USA.

Forestry maintenance work in the vicinity of the new reservoir offers a clearer view over the site, as snapped by our eager news hound Ektor with the help of his photographic assistants, Robert and Stephen out in bosky Mourtero. While works are still incomplete – we believe the project still awaits a last layer of lining – it seems only a matter of time before the reservoir is online.